Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau,...

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a “colleague with whose persons and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy.” With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James’s death in 1910, Stumpf became James’s most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf’s (Tonpsychologie) and James’s main books (The Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience), and many...